Former Managing Attorney of Consumer Law, Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio, LLC
Mark Lawson has lived in Cincinnati, Ohio his whole life. In this interview, he begins by discussing his first job out of law school in the late 1990s with the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, where he worked extensively on landlord-tenant disputes and evictions in the city’s low-income neighborhoods. After a one-year hiatus in the mid-2000s, Lawson returned to the public interest world, this time as a Managing Attorney of Consumer Law for the Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio, where he spearheaded the organization’s foreclosure efforts. Lawson describes the role he played in advocating for a foreclosure moratorium – an effort which was approved in the Ohio state House but lost momentum in the Senate – and his efforts to help stand up the Save the Dream Program and the Homeowner Preservation Initiative of Hamilton County, which helped save thousands of homes across the state.
Date Recorded:
February 10, 2021
Interviewed by:
Patrick Rochelle
Mark Byron Lawson, Esq. is the President/CEO of the Community Action Agency, Cincinnati | Hamilton County. He served on CAA’s Board of Directors for eighteen years, spending twelve years as the Board President. Prior to joining CAA in 2018, Mr. Lawson served as a Staff Attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, and then became Managing Attorney of Consumer Law at the Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio. Mr. Lawson participated in the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Leadership Cincinnati Class 37, as well as Leadership Action Class 4. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Xavier University and his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
